What's your pleasure? A hot Korean who speaks only body language? A gorgeous and heroic Frenchman? A masked man who can seduce with a mere touch? A Jamaican god who knows exactly how to tie you up? When your destination is desire, anything goes... Views: 57
This lively, beautifully illustrated history of the civilizations that rose and fell on the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea represents the culmination of a great historian’s unparalleled art, eye, and scholarship.John Julius Norwich is renowned for his magisterial histories, including the two-volume A History of Venice and the three-volume Byzantium. The Middle Sea showcases the qualities that have made him one of the most respected and popular historians of our day: witty prose, scrupulous research, and an unerring ability to bring to life the dramatic event, the colorful character, and the telling detail. Norwich traverses five thousand years of history, tracing the growth of culture, trade, political alliances and enmities, and religious movements from the Phoenician civilization to present-day Mediterranean nations. In a vivid, fully accessible narrative, he recounts the achievements of the Phoenicians, those great sea traders who carried not just goods but also knowledge to Europe and parts of Asia, the glories of ancient Egypt, the extraordinary contributions of the Greeks, and the rise of the mighty Romans. The twin stories of Byzantium and Islam, the dominant forces after the fall of Rome, crescendo in the incredible saga of the Fourth Crusade and carry readers to the reemergence of a vibrant Europe. From the far-reaching developments in medieval France to the Renaissance wars in Italy to the triumph of Isabella’s Spain, Norwich provides a brilliant portrait of the intermingling of ancient conflicts and modern sensibilities that shape life today on the shores of the Middle Sea. Views: 57
The Wizard Lord's duty is to keep the world in its delicate balance. He must govern lightly to protect his domain from power-hungry interlopers, such as certain wizards who previously fought to rule the world...But if the Wizard Lord himself strays from the way of the just, then it is up to the Chosen to intercede.The Chosen ones are the Leader, the Seer, the Swordsman, the Beauty, the Thief, the Scholar, the Archer, and the Speaker. Each are magically-infused mortal individuals who, for the term of their service, have only one function—to be available to remove an errant Wizard Lord, whether by persuasion or by stronger means. Breaker, a young man of ambition, has taken the mantle of Swordsman from its former bearer who wished to retire. Never did he realize that he would be called to duty so quickly, or that the balance of power in his world would be so precarious.He had a duty to perform. A world to save.So why does he still have... Views: 57
A murder in New York's diamond district; a dead Chinese girl with a photograph in her pocket; a plastic bag of irradiated heroin lying on the mantelpiece in an empty apartment; a fire in a sweatshop in the city's swarming Chinatown; the worst blizzard in New York history...These events conspire to bring ex-cop Artie Cohen out of retirement and back into an obsessive world of murder and politics that nearly killed him. Artie's struggles to link them take him from New York, his own back yard, to Hong Kong, site of the last big grab on earth, where everything, and everyone, is for sale... Views: 57
"I had always imagined that my life story...would have a great first line: something like Nabokov's 'Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins;' or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's 'All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.'... When it comes to openers, though, the best in my view has to be the first line of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier: 'This is the saddest story I have ever heard.'"So begins the remarkable tale of Firmin the rat. Born in a bookstore in a blighted 1960's Boston neighborhood, Firmin miraculously learns how to read by digesting his nest of books. Alienated from his family and unable to communicate with the humans he loves, Firmin quickly realizes that a literate rat is a lonely rat.Following a harrowing misunderstanding with his hero, the bookseller, Firmin begins to risk the dangers of Scollay Square, finding solace in the Lovelies of the burlesque cinema. Finally adopted by a down-on-his-luck science fiction writer, the tide begins to turn, but soon they both face homelessness when the wrecking ball of urban renewal arrives.In a series of misadventures, Firmin is ultimately led deep into his own imaginative soul—a place where Ginger Rogers can hold him tight and tattered books, storied neighborhoods, and down-and-out rats can find people who adore them.A native of South Carolina, Sam Savage now lives in Madison, Wisconsin. This is his first novel.From Publishers WeeklySavage's sentimental debut concerns the coming-of-age of a well-read rat in 1960s Boston. In the basement of Pembroke Books, a bookstore on Scollay Square, Firmin is the runt of the litter born to Mama Flo, who makes confetti of Moby-Dick and Don Quixote for her offspring's cradle. Soon left to fend for himself, Firmin finds that books are his only friends, and he becomes a hopeless romantic, devouring Great Books—sometimes literally. Aware from his frightful reflection that he is no Fred Astaire (his hero), he watches nebbishy bookstore owner Norman Shine from afar and imagines his love is returned until Norman tries to poison him. Thereafter he becomes the pet of a solitary sci-fi writer, Jerry Magoon, a smart slob and drinker who teaches Firmin about jazz, moviegoing and the writer's life. Alas, their world is threatened by extinction with the renovation of Scollay Square, which forces the closing of the bookstore and Firmin's beloved Rialto Theater. With this alternately whimsical and earnest paean to the joys of literature, Savage embodies writerly self-doubts and yearning in a precocious rat: "I have had a hard time facing up to the blank stupidity of an ordinary, unstoried life." (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistIn Savage's darkly comic debut, the titular metropolitan lowlife is a rat, albeit one with lofty literary ambitions. The runt of 13 siblings spawned in the basement of a shambolic Boston bookshop, Firmin survives his lean first weeks by munching on the edges of books. He quickly develops a predilection for actually reading them, too. Soon he's perusing everything from Joyce to compendiums of dirty jokes and even developing a secret fondness for the bookshop's owner, Norman. Tutored by a sign-language book, Firmin tries to communicate with Norman and his human brethren with predictably disastrous results until an obscure science fiction author, who writes about rats and lives above the bookshop, takes him in as a pet. There Firmin enjoys a brief respite of security, writing odes in his head and dreaming of glory, until the wrecking ball threatens the decaying neighborhood. Blending philosophy and abundant literary references with originality, Savage crafts a small comic gem about the costs and rewards of literary illusions. Carl HaysCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Views: 57
In this masterful collection of horror stories, George Zebrowski divides these nineteen tales into Personal, Political, and Metaphysical terrors?stories to scare you individually, stories to frighten you as a social animal, and stories that should terrify the entire human race. In ìI Walked with Fidel,î a young man encounters a once politically powerful zombie; ìJumperî focuses on a young woman with a dark and troubled past; while in ìThe Coming of Christ the Joker,î the light-hearted banter of a celebrity TV talk show becomes something far more serious. ìA Piano Full of Dead Spidersî is an eerie story of genius, its demands, and its delusions; in ìPassing Nights,î the truth behind a recurring nightmare is revealed; ìThe Soft Terrible Musicî depicts a man who must hide his past even from himself. And in the title story, the novella ìBlack Pockets,î Zebrowski asks: What happens to a man when his desire for revenge becomes all-consuming... Views: 56
HARBORING DESIRE Haunted by a traumatic past, Carrie Bishop exiled herself on the shadowy Cape Diablo island in search of the truth. She never expected to cross paths with a steely-eyed stranger as she combed a crumbling Spanish villa for clues. Nick Draco was as primitive and dangerous as the land he inhabited...and yet his magnetic presence awakened a breathless yearning inside her. An intense premonition of evil on the island left her chilled to the bone, but when they unearthed a menacing thirty-year-old mystery lurking within the estate's dilapidated walls, it was in Nick's arms where Carrie sought protection...and succumbed to seduction. Now, nothing could prepare either of them for the sinister revelations that were about to engulf Cape Diablo.... Views: 56
